Im not to the forum and new ish to the Pepwave world.
I have a Pepwave which was installed on a boat (for which I am captain) with 2 Sim Card slots (I am not sure of the model as it is all hidden away with only the SIM card slots visible).
On the boat we have TVs, Sonos and CCTV (which can be remotely viewed) connected to the network which get their Broadband via 4G via the Pepwave unit.
Generally it all works very well … when we havent used all of our 4G data allowance.
The owner likes to keep an eye on the boat during the Winter period when I am not around and the alarm system is linked back to his phone along with the CCTV cameras.
WHEN there is data available, this all works fine. However, if the monthly data gets consumed on the SIM card, he is unable to get any CCTV streamed to his phone when he is at home.
My question is, if we installed a second SIM with data, is there a way to tell the Pepwave to push all traffic via SIM 1 (the TVs and Sonos), but purely push the traffic from the CCTV via SIM 2.
This way if SIM 1 runs out of data, SIM 2 can be used purely to monitor the CCTV?
It sounds relatively simple in my head, but I don’t know if it is achievable so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Or can anyone think of another clever way to achieve similar results?
Yes - assuming that the device you have has dual cellular modems.Typically we would see a MAX BR1, MAX Transit or MAX HD4 in a marine install. These can have a maximum of 1, 2 and 4 active simultaneous cellular connections (so 1,2 and 4 cellular modems respectively). Each modem has two SIM card slots but only one SIM can be used at any one time (so active / backup).
If you have a MAX Transit or above then you can use two SIMs in two modems at the same time and configure outbound policies so that traffic from the TVs / Sonos use one and the CCTV uses another.
If you only have a MAX BR1 so single active modem, dual cellular, then the fix is a commercial one on the data SIMs or a technical one with a router upgrade.
Many Peplink partners have unlimited 4G/LTE data contracts designed for Marine deployments like yours.
Am I right in thinking that with this unit I can have two sims installed and when one reaches 100% use it will switch to the second one?
I have searched for data deals from the French mobile suppliers but all of them only seem to go up to 50-60gb/month for the sim that pepwave would use (eg sim for mifi device).
If anyone has any details of unlimited data sims for French it would be appreciated.
I know that @SamuelNorris can help with data in France (along with many others on here). Truely unlimited data SIMs do tend to cost more per GB - you will always tend to get a better deal if you know how much data you need and buy to a capacity. Do you have any ideas or feel for an amount of data that would work?
It’s a difficult one when it comes to yachting because of the season.
Between October to March the owners are hardly here so data use could probably drop to 10Gb/ month to cover things like CCTV and maintenance.
During early season April to May it needs ramping up to maybe 25gb and the June through to September needs to be around 75-100gb/month. It’s hard to find a happy medium and rare to find a provider who will allow you to increase/decrease throughout the year.
Currently with Vodafone (uk carrier but can use data in France). 50gb a month topped up with 15gb which still runs out in peak season.
Welcome to the forum @cpthompson82
If you can log into the device, you will be able to see the model there. (Log onto the router - default IP address is 192.168.50.1 and username and password are both admin but these should have been changed. Then click on Status and the router model, serial number and other info will be displayed there)
If you can put two SIMs into the unit and use one at a time, it probably the BR1.
The BR1 is a single modem with two SIM slots so you can use one SIM at a time and set data usage rules to allow the router to change over to the other SIM if a set limit is reached e.g. A SIM with 25Gb of data allowance, we would set the limit at 24Gb so it stops using that SIM and switches to the other SIM before the data runs out of is throttled to unusable speeds.
We have a commercial SIM contract with SFR which as @MartinLangmaid said, its truly unlimited and we also have other data options which allow you to pay per Gb.
